Changes Not Yet Seen
by Lady Heliotrope
Summary: "Perhaps you see, John, but as ever you do not observe." replied Sherlock, the scathing bite somehow missing from the way he usually used those words. Sherlock's return. Post Reichenbach. WIP.
1. Chapter 1

**I.**

There was a knock on John's door, and he opened it.

He had change in his hand, including a tip, for the Chinese take-out delivery boy he expected to find.

His heart bounded up and landed squarely in his stomach, like a helium balloon in a freezer, when he saw the too-wide grin on Sherlock Holmes' face.

"Miss me?" asked the man, leaning against the doorframe.

There was only one way to get rid of that Cheshire smile.

The change clattered onto the floor, the bills floated onto the floor, and Sherlock collapsed onto the floor - once John's fist had had enough of all three.

. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .

An icepack and some herbal tea later, John sat on mixed feelings as naturally as Sherlock sat on his new couch, which sat on the floor of his new flat, which sat on the fifth floor of an apartment building as unlike their Baker Street arrangements as John could find.

Sherlock was Sherlock, after all, even if he'd been a right prat and disappeared for years.

And Sherlock was... _Sherlock._

Indeed, it was like old times again as the long-presumed-dead consulting detective chattered rapidly about the people that had undergone so much disembodiment - sometimes literal, sometimes (bless him!) only metaphorical - at his hands.

John felt old stirrings rise up within him as he listened to the conceited, self-aggrandizing puffery, feelings that included joy, betrayal, anger, despair, denial, joy, self-loathing, joy, and, finally, joy won out.

"I must be a masochist," he said when Sherlock paused to reluctantly nibble a piece of toast that Harry (John's current flatmate) offered with cold insistence.

It was possible she hated Sherlock more than John did, at the moment, because Sherlock's reappearance could really only mean one thing - John would be moving and leaving her with twice the rent to pay.

"Because you aren't as angry as you think you should be?" asked Sherlock, his tone a bit too cheerful.

"As ever, you're right," said John, settling deeper into his chair and blushing just a bit.

Being under Sherlock's scrutiny felt _exactly _how he remembered it.

In all sorts of ways.

Ways he'd only recently come to terms with.

Ways Sherlock probably had noticed, acknowledged, and filed away the week they first began living together. And perhaps, in the time since, deleted.

Though the things John wanted to change would be easier to change if Sherlock's knowledge of those _ways_ hadn'tbeen deleted.

If those _ways _were seen as important. If those _ways _were reciprocated, somehow.

Sherlock had to have at least a few _ways _tucked in him somewhere, even if hidden and unacknowledged by his own brilliant mind.

Sherlock was _here_, wasn't he?

And what a journey it'd been to _get here_, it sounded!

If there weren't any _ways _that Sherlock felt for John, what would have been the point of coming back?

. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .

In a whirlwind of fervor they'd blown back into Baker Street and taken up residence as of old.

No sooner did they reestablish themselves (simple because Mycroft had paid rent on an untenanted flat for the duration) than did they collapse in exhaustion - Sherlock on his couch, John in his armchair.

And all was right as rain.

Morpheus only danced with them, however, and did not ask them to spend long at his lair - Sherlock soon was itching to _experiment_, especially because, he said, he'd had no proper conditions to do much labwork in his travels.

"Though I did, in France, do some studies on coal tar and resins that were _most _enlightening," he explained as he dug cardboard boxes for his goggles, and as he found them and put them on, the light of some untold joke was laughing in his eyes.

"Why do I get the sense that you're trying to be funny?" John said, stirring his tea.

"_Do _try to keep up, John. I was just telling you how I met Jean-Pierre Dermaud, who is not only a famed violinmaker about whom I've talked frequently but, more relevantly, an _exceptional _bowmaster."

John squinted at his friend. "Do you mean coal tar and resins have something to do with music?"

"Not _music_, John. Carbon-fiber bows - more durable and consistent than wooden bows, arguably better. I assisted Dermaud in uncovering who was pilfering hundreds upon hundreds of pounds' worth of trade secrets and exporting them to Chinese violin manufacturers."

John just laughed. "I see."

"Perhaps, John, but you do not _observe_," replied Sherlock, the scathing bite somehow missing from the way he usually used those words.

. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .

"So, in the meantime, John, I'm very interested to know if you've stopped telling yourself that you're _not gay_."

Well, John thought, that was as obvious as an outright confession.

It seemed that Sherlock _did _have some _ways_ in which he was _interested_ in certain _things._

So John smiled.

And was about to foray into waters that he'd only dreamed about discussing with Sherlock.

But...

"Good." Sherlock refocused his attention on his chemistry experiment. "It was getting painful, watching you run after women in some half-arsed attempt to conform to outmoded Victorian ideals when it was clear all along that even _I _was something you found more attractive. I assure you John, that I've always felt - well, the way you said it our first night on the run was quite apt - _It's all fine_, wasn't that what you said?"

John wasn't sure where this was going, but Sherlock wasn't looking at him and therefore not seeing the crestfallen look on his face.

"Anyway, I'm saying it. _It's all fine_. Provided you extend me the courtesy of not complaining if I practice violin while you're occupied with someone. Though if you turned on the radio or something, I wouldn't feel compelled to, you understand."

If John wasn't very aware that Sherlock was holding a tube full of volatile chemicals at the moment, he might have thrown a pillow at the great detective.

Was Sherlock gently alerting John to his indifference, or was he hopefully testing the waters?

Either way, John needed it to be spelled out to him. "So...you...Sherlock...you're _not_ interest...ed..."

"Not my area," returned Sherlock quietly, never taking his eye off the beaker of bubbling fluid that he held in forceps over the Bunsen burner.

* * *

><p><strong>To be continued.<strong>

**Reviews, please? With cherries on top?**


	2. Chapter 2

**II.**

From the moment John began questioning his sexual preference for women, he knew that falling in love with Sherlock Holmes was a Bad Alternative.

After all, considering the fact that, for the sake of not being _bored_, Sherlock would go to such lengths as beating corpses with riding crops, delighting over particularly gruesome murders, and swordfighting with not-particularly-amiable martial arts masters in their living room - well, considering that he did these things because his life was otherwise _mundane _and _dull_, John feared what sex would be like with a Sherlock who found the usual kissing, shagging, licking, et al. in which _normal _people engaged to be _mundane _and _dull_.

Well, if he had to admit it, John's fear was more akin to a kid who liked carnival rides looking at a really, really, _really _terrifying roller coaster. Namely, perhaps one part fear and one part awe to two parts exhilerated anticipation.

It was a dangerous cocktail, and liable to get him killed if he wasn't careful.

Then again, that's what life was like with Sherlock _en generale_, wasn't it?

Of course with the first whispers of _sex with Sherlock _in his head, that first night back in Baker Street, Irene Adler emerged back into the picture.

It was a startling moment to see Sherlock languidly chatting with her over Skype in just his pyjamas, her in...well, as far as John could tell, not much more than a blood-red Navajo blanket.

Not that he was looking.

But neither Sherlock nor Irene reacted with any shame when John emerged from the shower, wrapped in a terrycloth robe, his hair mussed, all the crevices in his ears wet.

"Hi there, John," called Irene from the computer as she saw him close the bathroom door. "It's been awhile."

John walked out of the range of the webcam, trying to decide if Sherlock's bouncing left foot was an expression of libido waiting to be unleashed once John was safely tucked away in his room, or if it was more innocuous, like a dog's wagging tail.

"Hullo yourself," John said, trying not to sound as savage as he felt, heading towards the kitchen instead of looking at her face balanced expertly on Sherlock's right thigh.

"Are you making tea?" asked Sherlock, not glancing up, "If you are, bring me some."

"I wasn't," said John, but he was just being contrary, because it had been his intention. "But if you want it..."

Sherlock was silent, which was his way of assenting, but John heard Irene whisper something indefinite, after which Sherlock actually managed to scrape out the words "Yes, please. I'd like that."

Whatever spell Irene had over Sherlock, the great detective was badly taken if she was capable of making him utter such _banal_things as polite niceties, so long scorned by him.

The pair was talking about tea when John returned, rather _too _conversationally than he preferred.

"Do you remember how the Raj would serve it?" Irene was saying with delightful giggles of reminiscence - not overbearing or horsey or trying-too-hard-to-be masculine, like Harry's laughs were - Irene's laughter was simply ladylike, charming, and truly _elegant_. Though cruel.

"He really _was _asking for his own murder," Sherlock agreed with a snigger. "Pomp and circumstance to rival Her Majesty's."

"You know Sherlock, you're _absolutely_right about that comparison - and I know that for a fact."

She laughed, Sherlock didn't, but there was something in his eyes that showed he was enjoying the conversation.

John, with fortitude, prevented himself from plunking down Sherlock's teacup in such a way that it would splatter all over Sherlock's laptop.

"It was almost a shame to catch the villain," said Sherlock, lazily extending his hand to take the cup from the table, nodding to John in a silent thank-you and sipping. "It just goes to show how people get caught in their own patterns. What does the Raj do to thank us saving him but hold another tea ceremony?"

Irene laughed, merry and bright as jingle bells. "I noticed that too. He didn't seem to catch the irony, himself."

"I don't know that he could catch much of anything unless he had some exercise," noted Sherlock with deadpan brevity, to which Irene just laughed and laughed. "Oh, shut up, Irene, John's sitting here looking scandalized."

John was sitting quietly, drinking his tea, looking at the back of Sherlock's computer and at Sherlock's face, which was lit both by the backlight of the computer and the more subtle brightness of humor.

"I'm getting married, you know, John," said Irene, even though she couldn't see him. "To a very nice Catholic man. He used to be a Cardinal."

"Until he met you," said Sherlock with a too-serious interjection, and the two of them erupted in puerile laughter.

"Congratulations," said John with a tang of bitterness in his voice, still suspicious of his friend and _that woman_ but not because he could discern _why_.

"What?" Irene called to clarify.

He repeated himself, more neutrally, a little louder.

"Oh, thank you, my dear. Now Sherlock, I'm going to have to ring off. I hope everything goes well for you both there in London. May I say very frankly that I don't miss England at all?"

"You _may _say it," said Sherlock with a respectful nod, though it was clear he disagreed. "Indeed, Cairo suits you much better."

"I do hope you mean the weather and my sunny disposition and not the political turbulence."

"Oh, I mean it in every sense," said Sherlock evasively. "Nonetheless, have a good night, Irene."

"You too, you great sexy idiot._ A bientot_."

Sherlock muttered a reply in a language John didn't recognize, and with a click and a snap, the chat ended and the computer closed.

And then Sherlock was gauging John's temper, observing his flatmate so coolly that the whole thing might have been some controlled experiment.

"That was...different," said John by way of breaking the silence.

"You didn't like that," concluded Sherlock, who seemed to have been waiting for John to say something; he now was putting his fingers together, leaning back, and staring at the ceiling in a thoughtful position.

"No, not really, no," said John, grateful to be understood at least on that point.

"Do you have a reason for your disapproval?" asked Sherlock, and it seemed like his carelessness was forced.

"No," said John, though he realized at the moment he said it, it was a lie - quite simply, he was _jealous _of Irene, it was as plain and uncomplicated as that.

And moreover, it was pathetic because it was so clear that any jealousy on his part was futile. If Sherlock wanted to pursue a relationship with Irene - well, he had the right to, of course, though it would be morally questionable if Irene really _was _going to marry an ex-Cardinal (did such a person exist?), but since when did Sherlock care about doing things that were morally questionable if it suited him?

"All right then," said Sherlock, and, without looking, he aimlessly reached for his cup of tea, which he didn't seem to remember was on the table, not the floor.

His hand emerged from under the couch with a bottle of brandy, which he opened casually and poured about a shot's worth into his half-drunk tea. He then tilted his head, raised the bottle, and wiggled his eyebrows at John, who was only too glad to reangle the armchair a bit closer to grab it and utilize it for his own purposes. Two shot's worth in his nearly-gone cup of tea.

"I know you're not a great fan of change, John," said Sherlock after the doctor had sipped the cocktail appreciatively. "So I'm letting you know now...I'm a bit different than when I left three years ago."

"Yeah, well, that's obvious," said John, so snarlingly that he himself was shocked. "You've always been very _close _with _That Woman._"

"We were traveling partners. A matter of...convenience."

It was clear that Sherlock wasn't saying everything that he _could _say about Irene Adler, but John didn't want to know anything more about how their relationship had evolved.

After all, hadn't she been _dead_?

And hadn't Sherlock been _devastated?_

"Yeah. All right." John tried to affect nonchalance, but he felt Sherlock's hand grip his wrist, and he looked up to meet Sherlock's penetrating eyes.

"Just as _we_began our long-standing relationship independent of sex, John, so did my friendship with Irene begin independent of sex."

There was a lot of conviction behind those words, and meaningfulness, too.

It was a strange way for Sherlock to act. Very disconcerting.

"Um. Fine. I don't care," said John, a little too emphatically. "Just...well, other people might take it the wrong way, you know. The way you talk to each other. And...was she even _wearing _anything that whole time you were talking to her?"

As fickle as the wind, Sherlock let go of John's warming wrist and breezily, dramatically said, "You know I've never given a damn about what society thinks, John, and you know I never will."

John forced himself to laugh. "That's one thing about you that'll never change, Sherlock."

"Rather," agreed the great consulting detective thoughtfully, entering upon a Brown study. "I don't change _that _much."

* * *

><p><strong>To be continued<strong>

**Reviews, please? With chocolate AND cherries on top?**


	3. Chapter 3

**III.**

"Stop. Stop doing that," John whinged as Sherlock's bare and far too elegant feet drummed against the wooden floor.

Boredom was beginning to seep into Sherlock's life already, it seemed. And it was only seven in the morning.

In a sudden rush of obedience, Sherlock sat up straight and tucked his legs beneath him on the couch. "Cold," he said by way of explanation. "Is there coffee?"

He seemed to have a strange self-consciousness this morning, John noticed, and at the oddest times would alter his behavior at the drop of a hat.

Actually, come to think of it, maybe this self-consciousness had actually been affecting Sherlock's behaviors since Sherlock's unexpected return two evenings prior.

But of course Sherlock was acting a little strangely – it _had _been _years_.

People in their position didn't just go back to _the way things were _without having the stain of the intermediate period color everything.

Then again, as John grumblingly stood up to make coffee, everything certainly _felt _like _the way it'd been_.

What with his submission to slave labor and all.

In fact, he wondered as he boiled water in the microwave oven and presented a mug of highly-sugary black stuff to his flatmate, whether or not he'd been delusional to decide, as he had on a momentous day in his therapist's office two years ago, that he was in love with Sherlock.

Could one fall in love with one's drill-sergeant?

Sherlock's expression upon first sip, indifferently taken without retraining his focus from the medical journal that zipped across John's laptop screen, was extraordinary.

"This is _instant_," he snarled after a reluctant swallow, as if John had inadvertently betrayed him. "I thought we had a Bialetti?"

John shrugged. "No groceries."

"Well, we'd better be getting some." Of course Sherlock made no motion to move, except to wrinkle his face and down the drink as dutifully as Socrates drank his hemlock.

John sat down and sipped the cup he'd made for himself and realized that Sherlock's complaint was valid. The stuff tasted _putrid _and _powdery _and clung to the roof of his mouth.

"I'll make a list," said John matter-of-factly, getting out his phone.

"That's new," said Sherlock, and John looked at him quizzically – he'd _always _made lists for the grocery - until he realized that the detective had noticed and was referring to his gadget.

"Oh. Yeah. Well, I can afford something decent now that I've got a regular career for someone of my age and education," said the doctor, and a brief surge of alarm seemed to cross Sherlock's face, even while it was still glued to the computer screen.

"But no matter how much time you spend in the office, your client base is still tenuous," said Sherlock after a pause.

"That's not fair," said John, though as always Sherlock was right. "I've been working like a dog."

"Watching _Downton Abbey _with altogether too much relish between patients," Sherlock said, reaching out to sip invisible coffee from his empty cup, purely for the sake of appearing carelessly cruel, John imagined. "Five stars, John...really? Is that for Rob-James Collier? No, of course it is, that's not even a question."

Sherlock clicked loudly as John tried to maintain his composure. "Oh, and what's this Amazon wishlist entitled 'when I got an extra hundred quid' that has, of all things, plain cotton _underpants? _Are you really in such desperate straits that you can't afford new underpants when you want them, John?"

"I'd tell you to stop browsing my Internet history if there was any hope that you'd at least _pretend_ to respect my wishes _for once _and retrain yourself to do your snooping when I'm not around," said John, griping meaninglessly.

"What, and spare you the humor of my comments that you so obviously enjoy?"

"Enjoy like I enjoy battling with the pin and chip machine at Tesco's," replied John tartly. "Come on and dress, will you? I'm not in the mood to deal with the bloody thing today, and we've already established that you have a magic touch."

"They really _did _fix it, John, it's not as though technology bows before me."

"Well, I'm sure that if I take you at your word and go alone, I'll be standing there until the milk goes sour."

"That's highly improbable, given the lowness of the outdoor temperatures this past week and the fact that the machine monitor's absences from her post are restricted to as long as the phone-calls to her boyfriend last, I'd guess those last an average of three-quarters of an hour."

John responded to this by rolling his eyes. But there was apparently only so much arguing that Sherlock was willing to take this morning; it was gratifying to see him snap the laptop shut with a sigh worthy of a prima donna. "_Fine_," the detective moaned, "Though whatever you're going to do if one day I'm incapacitated and we're lying here starving to death..."

"There's a _café _below-stairs, don't you forget," said John, typing in a text to himself items to get at the grocery. "Now, let me see...bread, coffee, milk, sugar, jam, eggs, some sort of meat that we won't mix up with whatever human body parts you end up putting in our fridge...what else..."

"Curry paste, gluten-free biscuits, and do you think they'll have pickled radishes? I've never bothered to see if they had such a thing."

John couldn't help but express a muttered exclamation of surprise. "Oh don't tell me you've leaped on the anti-gluten bandwagon, Sherlock. That's health-food companies and pseudoscience gone wild preying on the arrogant and misinformed consumer."

"It's for Mycroft, that's his latest fad."

This was perhaps even more surprising to John.

"Since when do you care what Mycroft likes?"

A curt smile came to Sherlock's face.

"Since he doesn't know he's getting kidnapped by us this afternoon."

This plot sounded more than agreeable to John. "Ah, comeuppance at last."

"Indeed." They shared a bit of a laugh. "Or at least that's what I was thinking we should do, but the clouds induce lethargy. Isn't it just like the British government, to perpetuate sloth in the nation by ensuring maximum amount of sky-cover as frequently as possible?"

"Um, that's been English weather since time immemorial," said John, standing up and smiling foolishly at Sherlock's conspiracy theories.

"Yes, but English _government _has also been around _since time immemorial_," rejoined Sherlock, yawning and laying back on the couch with dead weight.

"Valid point," said John with a shrug, "but you don't seriously think-"

"-I _always _seriously think," said Sherlock with nonetheless dubious conviction, "My mind is, as I've _always _said, a well-oiled machine, and such a machine is incapable of humor because humor is messy stuff that clogs the gears."

"And also makes life a little bit more worth living," returned John, feeling more at ease in this comfortable territory, arguing about the relative merits of living a life tainted by things like _emotions_. He put out his hand and extended it to Sherlock. "Come on, get up and come with me."

"No, maybe not," said Sherlock, not stirring. "I'm not particularly hungry."

"You will be, probably at an indecent time like three in the morning, and where does that leave you if I refuse to buy pickled radishes and curry paste?"

"I only wanted pickled radishesbecause of the chemical composition of the brine, which is in my experience optimal for the preservation of insects, differing significantly from ordinary gherkin brine in the fact that the iodine in the gherkin brine is converted in the manufacturing process to something less-"

"-Okay, okay, shut up," said John, waving at his flatmate and turning on his heel. "I'll get your blasted radishes, if they have them, and your curry paste, and your biscuits."

"Leave the biscuits, actually, John – I don't think we'll spring our plan on my brother just yet. I'm rather exhausted. Not that Mycroft isn't responsible for that. He knows that putting a cloth over a parrot's cage will make its body produce melatonin no matter what time of day it is, thus putting it to sleep."

"You aren't serious," said John, feeling all of a sudden that really, they were interacting in exactly the same old ways. Maybe it was just the scientific leaning of the dialogue, but there it was. "Do you have any money?"

"In the fridge."

"What?"

"It's not like there's anything else in there, is there?"

John went to the kitchen and looked where he'd been told, and, sure enough, there was an envelope neatly bound in a rubber band that contained an astonishing number of upper-denomination bills.

"Okay, I'm going," he called.

Sherlock was deeply engaged in talking to himself about the differences between peoples' upper incisors – heaven knows how he'd got there - but managed an "Oh, I didn't notice you'd left. Laters."

"Laters yourself."

In the most put-upon fashion possible, John shut the door and slugged down the stairs.

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><p>*is cautious about posting chapter this because this story may appear to have devolved into silliness*<p> 


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